Chapter Text
Food folk filled the streets with life and laughter.
Nothing in this good world could quite compare to Comida and its edible edifices, mushroom mansions, beetroot buildings, zucchini ziggurats, leafy cathedrals, plentiful horns, and food pyramids. It is the dream of every milk-man, waffle-woman, and cheese-child to make the special journey to the great city at least once in their short shelf life. Pilgrims and natives alike marveled at the scale, the beauty, the poetry of it all. Everything is caught up in a glorious haze of comestible gold glitter.
Cabbage carriages, pulled by scallion-stallions and potato-horses, pushed through the crowded, cobbled thoroughfare as popping candy fireworks set off. Mutton-musicians sang with their flutes and lutes and kazoos, emboldening a town peopled by lovers of the arts. Several sets of stalls shouldered the shiny streets, selling stuff that smelled of something sweet and sour. The romantic, aromatic, tear-jerking, nostril-flaring scent reached the inside of a prisoner wagon part of a larger convoy.
"'Tis my first Eggamere Festival," Eggsy lamented. "And I can do naught but to watch from the wayside, jailed."
Eggsy was a small hard-boiled egg in his youth, and he was not alone in his morose imprisonment, for he was accompanied by his six dashing boon companions: a chocolate-monk with tall ears with an oversized violet ribbon wrapped backwards around his neck going by the name of Brer Bunny, a pumpkin-lady in a red jacket and a straw hat known as Jackie O'Lantern, a little marshmallow-man garbed in black leather with half of his face burnt off and a stick poking out of his head aptly named Marsh the Mellow, a pointy-nosed radish-boy in a woodland rain cape referred to as Radical Randy, an anxious scarfed garlic-person in an apron ironically called Wild Buck Ramson, and Poppy the lithe lollypop-lady of Candian descent.
They were childhood friends, and together they formed the Pantry Party. It was a cute nickname they've coined as children, when they were always running amok in the orphanage. All their lives they've fancied themselves paladins and monks and wizards and fighters and warlocks and clerics and bards. Most of them were now laughing at the damned notion. How can they expect to venture out with their swords and staffs and spears confiscated?
Poppy sighed in deep resignation. "Thou needn't have struck that banana-knight, Eggsy."
Eggsy prodded his blackened eye. "Mustn't I? He was being rude to the innkeep. In that position, one is left with very little options."
"So," said Radical Randy, "what thou didst was born of heroic instinct and not because you found the innkeep handsome and comely?"
"Verily." Eggsy grinned. "I never got his christened name. I hope to meet him again someday."
"Unlikely." Meanwhile, Marsh the Mellow was gripping the metal bars and, with his tiny, fluffy hands, tried to rip them off.
"Sacre Bulb," said Jackie O'Lantern in her dentalized, uvular Fructeran accent. "That shan't work."
Marsh loosened his hold and snarled through clenched teeth. "Fie! I'm starvin'! And they ain't bothered to feed us the whole journey."
"Perchance they plan to execute us," Brer Bunny said dryly in his velvety voice.
Wild Buck Ramson whimpered at the thought. "By the Bulb, surely self-defense isn't a punishable offense? Certainly not by death!"
Eggsy patted his friend on the shoulder. "Worry not, my allium companion. Knights and nobles and feudalists can no longer hurt common folk as they see fit and fain. Justice is on the side of the peasantry class! It's writ in the law of the Concord as proclaimed by the Emperor Eggsquire himself."
Marsh, ever the mellow sort, scoffed at the remark. "Legalities aside, thou sayest that as if the monarchs and chiefs and senators of the six nations shalt pay any heed to the Concordant Emperor's reforms."
Eggsy ignored the blunt burnt marshmallow and gazed outside, at the Candian circus performers juggling balls and bowling pins whilst spitting cones of fire from the inside of the massive marquee, prompting applause in cheers and claps. The egg-boy could tell they were of the Ruby Red Circus, which specialized in training acrobats and trapeze artists. The company was established by a famed princess many a generation ago. The energy of the performers was worthy of Saint Eggamere's Festival, and certainly worthy of a Melange Metropolis a thousand years old.
The outskirts of the wealthy, healthy city used to just be rolling melon hills and cherry orchards, and was considered territory of Fructera. Now it's an independent region all to itself called Cornucopia, and the influx of migrants further diversified the flora and fauna. Candians planted candy cane trees and transformed a portion of the land into muffin meadows, carrying over cattle like caramel chickens and cocoa cows. The Beef Clan, the Pork Clan, the Fish Clan, the Venison Clan, the Chevon Clan, the Mutton Clan, and the Poultry Clan have brought forth great beasts from Carn's coliseum like the meatball mammoth, the bone bear, and the ham hound. Vegetanians flooded the open velds with irrigated farmlands, embracing the rich greenery of the soil. Ceresian architects built a length of aqueducts that stretched all along the Glucian Road, reminiscent of expert engineering works in Pangranos.
Comida was, indeed, a consummate admixture of the variegated cultures and customs from all across the continent: Vegetania, Fructera, Candia, Ceresia, the Meat Lands, and the Dairy Islands. The city has had a story complete with comedies, tragedies, and histories. It was the very site where the founder of the church and the namesake of the festival lived, was overcooked, and died. A tale every Caloran kid knows, one where the fair saint sacrificed himself for his followers and for the big Bulb above.
Eggsy said, "Before she had moved on, my mum used to tell me so many bedtime stories about good ol' Eggamere when I was but a babe, how he was a hard-boiled egg just like I."
Radical Randy said, "I hate to break it to thee, Eggsy, but in all likelihood your mum told you a falsehood. I heard Eggamere was a soft-boiled egg."
Poppy said, "Wasn't the man fried?"
Brer Bunny said, "I conster he was scrambled."
Marsh the Mellow said, "Mayhap he was a deviled egg."
It wasn't meant as a jape, but what Marsh said got a chuckle out of Jackie O'Lantern. "A deviled egg earning sainthood is deliciously ironic."
Eggsy nodded. "Just because you're a deviled egg doesn't mean you're a devil of a man."
"Hold on," said Wild Buck Ramson, aghast. "Have none of you read the Book of Leaves except me?"
Three loud bangs coming from the roof of the wagon cut the conversation short, followed by a voice yelling out, "Oi! Shut your pie holes!"
Marsh closed his fist and responded with three loud bangs of his own. "The Hungry One take you, villain!"
Poppy, being diplomatic, said, "We'll shut our pie holes, provided you tell us where we're going."
The driver bellowed at the prisoners in naughty, haughty laughter. "Can't you tell by now? You're being taken to court to answer for your crimes! I haven't the foggiest what's so special about all of ye, but orders are that you're to be taken and judged by the imperial council itself. Whatever you've done, you've seriously pissed someone off, so cease your blabbering about or I'll have the lot of ye flogged!"
The prisoner passengers passed looks of bewilderment to each other, confounded by how punching one errant robber knight square in the jaw led to this.
For Eggsy, the obvious earned utterance. "They're taking us to the Cornucopian Hall."